Autumn is the best season for reading.
Sorry, wait. Reading is all-year, all-weather, all-purpose. Suntanning by a hotel pool, curling up under a winter quilt, waiting out an April shower in a cafe, absentmindedly forking a sad work lunch, riding the train home: all scenarios improved by books.
But it’s in autumn that reading becomes more than itself; a fetishized activity. It’s as much a part of the atmosphere as leaves crunching underfoot, heath-gray skies, field jackets and corduroy jumpers, hay bales and mountains of macintosh apples (I don’t intend to sully reading by corralling it into the pen of pumpkin-spice fall fever, but even basics are permitted the privilege of a good story).
Why autumn? First, even as a working adult, the start of the academic year brings nerdy nostalgia, the memory of musty school libraries past. Second, the crisp, chilly air, moody drizzles, and seasonal sniffles provide more excuses to cancel plans and stay inside. Third, fall has Halloween horror and Thanksgiving theatrics, which have proven rich sources of literary fodder.
The season always reminds me of this brief snippet from Little Women, which I read probably at age 8 and have never forgotten. Never mind that this scene takes place shortly after Christmas; it is, to me, a Big Fall Mood:
"Here!" answered a husky voice from above, and, running up, Meg found her sister eating apples and crying over the Heir of Redclyffe, wrapped up in a comforter on an old three-legged sofa by the sunny window. This was Jo's favorite refuge, and here she loved to retire with half a dozen russets and a nice book, to enjoy the quiet and the society of a pet rat who lived near by and didn't mind her a particle.
Here are past Carve works from Fall issues accessible online that evoke the seasonal spirit (though they’re much darker than Louisa May Alcott).
“Cooling,” by Julie Eill: “Stupid deer,” I yell. “We’re trying to help you.”
“Oregon Grind,” by Rick Attig: “The rain let up, the hulk of the mill rising out of the mist with the rotting piles of bark in the empty yard, the rusted crane frozen overhead, and the solitary light at the office like a last open eye.”
”Safe, Somewhere,” by Baird Harper: “Supposedly the skull of the man lost in the Lincolnville fire was forged into a two-hundred-karat diamond that the shareholders keep in a vault under the Cuyahoga River.”
”The Mattress Boy of Cameroon,” by Kate Jackson: “My friends make fun of me—“You are in love with a ghost,” they say. I tell them they are wrong, but I sometimes I do not know.”
”The Odyssey,” by Jia Tolentino: “Drivers braked, dodging scraps of tire, twisted metal, watermelons splashing open on the road in fecund bursts of pink and striped green.”
What are your favorite fall reads?